—- Runabout Apollo Mission Briefing —-

The question took longer to arrive than Commander Olivia Carrillo had anticipated, and it was Chief Intelligence Officer Lieutenant Commander Jack Dornall who asked it, and he was not a man who had a reputation for not wanting to antagonize the Cardassians.

“Assuming that we could stop them, that help was on its way, would we want to?” Dornall asked, “If this was us rushing to save a planet or the Federation against desperate odds then I’d be all for intervention. Here I don’t think they’re wrong. I like knowing who my enemy is and where they’re coming from, this is just… well we don’t know the unknown unknowns. Think of how destructive the Dominion War was, and that was just one wormhole, this is an untold number all with potential enemies and threats.”

“And allies, and new worlds to explore,” Carrillo argued, not sure he was wrong, “Starfleet is about expanding what’s possible, seeing what’s behind the next corner and over the next hill.”

“Imagine the Borg able to suddenly appear with a hundred ships in front of every world, any world,” Dornall said, it was clear that he expected that to sting and it did. The loss of her brother on Fleet Day still hurt and Carrillo had to struggle to keep from becoming upset.

Finally rather than snapping back she sighed, “Orders are orders.”

“I’ve run through about a dozen strategies in my head and they all end up with us dead or prisoners and at most delay the Cardassians a few days,” Dornall said, “If Starfleet wants to stop that they’d better send us a Manticore-class ship.”

“Hume assessment?” Carrillo asked, still wanting to explore all non-death to us all options.

The Assistant Chief Security Officer pointed to the display, “See that passage there, if you beam a team including Murf, Lieutenant Commander Dornall, Rosa and myself there we can make our way to the platform’s computer core, there Murf can… break things?”

“The Cardassians will know we’re there and we’ll be killed. Even in Murf succeeds it buys us what, a day?” Dornall asked.

There was quite in the runabout as they all considered that, then Carrillo nodded, “Okay baring acceptable resources we’re going to hold off on a plan. I’ll communicate with Starfleet and request assets and we’ll go from there.”

She stood, adjusted her uniform and nodded, “Dismissed. I’ll fly us to the Neutral Zone and we’ll communicate with Starfleet from there.”

The runabout banked and at Carillo’s fingertips exited the neutral zone, where she reported into Starfleet and had to wait for an answer. While she was waiting Lieutenant Das called out, “Cardassians are exiting the underspace. Something’s happening.”

Carrillo left the pilot’s seat and headed to the back of the runabout, “What is it?”

“Massive power surge and…” Lieutnant Eshita Das looked at the data flowing across the screen from sensors they’d placed at the entrance and through out the passage. She glanced at Carrillo, “It’s gone ma’am, shut. The Cardassians have done it, they’ve closed off underspace.”

“Okay I’ll file my report and we’ll head back to Starbase 86,” Carrillo said, “No last minute heroics today.”